Though I suppose the main idea was to develop a habit of doing something everyday, in which case I felt I was successful. While I haven't written a post here everyday, I have still been working everyday.
So what I've done is revamped my daily schedule to have a broader scope and get alot more done in the process.
Starting with Mondays, which will be dubbed "Memorable Mondays." Mondays will be when I create a blog post that's either a review, a preview, or me just rambling on about something inspiring or nostagiac to me. This includes all media: comics, movies, video games, etc. So let's get straight into it!
I'm gonna start with a brief summary of what got me interested in art, and specifically "action" oriented stories. I wanted to start off with something from my childhood, and there was actually a huge amount of stuff to choose from. Towards the beginning I was raised on comic books, and the early nineties is arguably where some of the most creative stuff was happening. The eighties were over, and so was the notion of "happy go lucky heroes" that was pretty common. The nineties was all about grudge and blood and realism, which had started with some key stuff in the eighties but entertainment in general started to accept the whole grunge vibe in the nineties. So I grew up with some pretty serious stories from both DC and Image comics. Namely Batman and Spawn.
With Spawn being the badass that McFarlane had created him to be, it was really interesting as a young kid to read stories that were meant for more of a young adult audience. I still have a pet peeve for movies like X-men and the like not showing any blood. What kid doesn't know what blood is?...Anyways before I get off-topic.
Being a kid though, I still grew up with all the essentials. Classic martial arts oriented action that was inspired by Asian influences, but adapted for a young, American audience. Here's a few I don't really have to explain.
Suddenly, my local cable channels were showing cartoons that were way different, with a different kind of dramatic tone. Really interesting stuff that was coming from Japan. Stuff that was apparently called "anime" (I wouldn't really hear of this term until Pokemon came around). My first anime was called Ronin Warriors. It was my first favorite anime, up until Dragonball Z showed up.
And when I was still young, and the internet was just starting to pick up, I would wait like 45 minutes to watch a clip of some clip from Japan of Goku or whoever turning Super Saiyan, something I wouldn't see on an American television for about 5 years!! Stupid RealPlayer! I used to be all over Geocities sites looking for pictures and clips...it's so weird to think back and see how technology has developed. I would die to watch a whole clip like this video below, I would wait forever just to see about 15 seconds of that, in a terrible quality video.
A lot of these stories really seemed to stick around with me all the way through middle school, especially Batman TAS and Dragonball Z, mostly because there were so many characters and so many episodes. As I started to want to create my own characters and stories I studied these franchises and characters to figure out what made them interesting. I never read a "how to create a character and an interesting story" book. I learned about character development and the "hero story" by observing how my favorite characters were put through their trials and tribulations. Years later it's nice to look back and be able to say that these cartoons and comics still inspire me today.
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